Constructivism: Benefits, costs and what we should be doing Week 5: mini-report PowerPoint Team Name: Tech 4 Recorder: Setsuko Phegley Coordinator: Hong Zhou Elaborator: Camelia Baluta Explorer A: Julianna Purner Explorer B: Tina Peters Explorer C: Alex Conway

Constructivism: Benefits, costs and what we should be doing Presentation for the Conference held by American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages

What is Constructivism?

Definition Constructivism is: A paradigm specifically for learning and teaching. Also a learning theory that takes an approach throughout the educational system where the learner is the builder that does the main constructing.

Benefits of Constructivism There are several benefits related to constructivism: It can motivate young learners to learn in an engaging manner. It can increase collaboration skills as well as communication skills. It can benefit learners in future classes since they can preserve what they had learned and apply it to future courses throughout their learning process.

Costs of Constructivism It may be misused as curriculum and relied upon too heavily when it is intended to be a form of modification. The mental representations are subjective do to the fact that they rely on the learner's knowledge they had gained previously, making the assessment a difficult process. The gaps remain between previous knowledge as well as the new knowledge in which certain tasks are required.

What Should We Be Doing? Match up the amount of learning experiences to the student's amount of readiness Provide social interaction throughout the learning process by asking students to discuss and reflect the activities Design while aligning experiences for learners to reveal and experience genuine and relevant context Adopt spiral curriculum to increase levels of complexity and abstractness for the topics that are the same

Implication from Theory for Instruction Constructivism has switched the roles of the teacher and student in the learning process. Teacher acts like a facilitator and the student remains in the center of the learning process. Task Based Learning Teacher- Centered Model Student- Centered Model

Questions?

Resources Ertmer, P. A., Newby, T. J. (1993). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6 (4), Lutz, S., & Huitt, W. (2004). Connecting cognitive development and constructivism: Implications from theory for instruction and assessment. Constructivism in the Human Sciences,9(1), Reigeluth, C. M. (1989). Educational technology at the crossroads: New mindsets and new directions. Educational Technology Research and Development, 37(1), Images: Files/8/4657.hands.jpg